the ninety-seventh hunger games.
Liv Malone wins The Hunger Games when she is sixteen years old.
She surprises everyone when she doesn't object, doesn't cry, doesn't look scared. She surprises everyone because Liv Malone doesn't care, isn't afraid. She doesn't cry in front of everyone, doesn't let them see how she feels. Liv Malone is not recognized as a weakling.
But she's terrified, and that's the truth. But Mini, ever so smart Mini, has taught her not to let her emotions show. Mini, who knows the Games better than anyone, Mini, who knows all the tactics there are.
"Bring home another win for District One" Mini had said at their goodbyes, while Grace clutched Rich, Nick tried to hide his tears, and Franky and Alo stood, scared at the thought of what was to come.
"Can't let you take all the glory, can I Mins?" Liv had replied, and Mini had sniffed but forced a grin. And Liv knew that there was only one thing on the mind of the blonde, memories of messing around in the Malone house, making fun of fellow residents. And she knows that Mini has forgiven her then, forgiven her for all the things that happened when they were twelve.
"Yeah" Mini smirked, because crying would have made it too real "Good luck with that, Malone."
Before they left, Nick had hugged her tightly, properly, for the first time in years. And it was then, for her ears only, that he had whispered the five words she'd never expected to hear.
"He'd be proud of you." And it didn't take Liv longer than a millisecond to know who he was talking about.
Liv was the only one who makes an alliance in the arena. Her fellow tribute, a boy who Liv has seen around, one who got in a scrap with Alo a few years before, one who was never been seen without dice in his hands, something Mini has laughed out countless times. His name was Alex Henley. He made sure Liv made it through the games, made sure Liv remembered she had a reason to win. Liv did the same for him, because everything Rich and Franky and Nick (but never Mini, Mini who never mentioned her life in the arena) made sense.
It comes down to the two of them, and Liv knows it's the Capitol pulling strings.
Liv gets the upper hand in the end, and Alex isn't even struggling, why, and the one thing that haunted Liv from that day forward whether it was because of his dice. But then, when winning was right in her grasp, she wondered what he had to win for. The people in District 1. Grace. Mini. Nick. Alo. Rich. Franky. Maude. But it's not the thought of them that got her to push the knife through Alex's heart. It was the memory of a boy, a boy whom she maybe loved, one who disappeared years before.
Liv Malone won The Hunger Games when she was sixteen years old, in the name of Matthew Levan.
the ninety-eigth hunger games.
Alo Creevey wins The Hunger Games out of sheer luck. It wasn't like Franky, who won because Mini made it so, because she watched Rider freeze to death. It wasn't like Nick, who won because he was fast and brave and won in the name of his brother.
Alo Creevey wins out of luck.
His arena was a thick dense forest, where muttations of all shapes and sizes lurked in every corner, mixed in with normal animals. The backpacks at the Cornucopia held everything but food, and it didn't take the Tributes long to realize to survive, they had to hunt.
And Alo, despite his hatred of his life on the small District 1 farm, despite Mini's constant taunts and nickname 'Farmboy', despite never having enjoyed his job, is the only one who knows what is safe to eat. The differences are so small, he barely pulled it off.
It takes him less than a week to win. He returns home to find everything has changed, from his friends to Mini's nicknames to the way his parents act around him.
He wonders if they'd rather he'd never won, even if it proved how much he needed them.
the ninety-ninth hunger games.
Nobody expected Grace Violet Blood to take place in the Hunger Games. She was eighteen, it was her last year, she was the daughter of Mayor Blood. Only seven slips of paper. All her friends had been in the arena, and Grace being reaped would be another sick, cruel twist of fate.
(But as they always forget, the Capitol loves cruel, twists of fate.)
But she was, and nothing, not even Rich's attempt to lunge at their escort, the nos emitting from her three best friends, not the looks that Alo and Nick shoo her, full of fear and regret, not even her father silently bickering with their escort, stopped it from happening. David Blood controls a lot of things, but the games are not one of them.
Grace Violet Blood doesn't care that all of her footage pre-games involved red eyes.
"Grace" Rich had said, holding her close, while their friends stood around them, lost for words. Not Grace. Anybody but Grace.
"You can do this. Don't die. I need you Grace" he had said, and kissed her for what could've been the final time.
It wasn't the last time, and even though Grace loved Rich, she wondered if maybe, maybe winning wasn't good.
She had run the second the gong went off, hiding in the forest of her arena, a place with ever changing seasons that went to all the weather limits to kill or push the tributes to insanity. Grace barely manages to scrape through without either befalling her, and the thing that keeps her alive is Rich, just like the reason Rich had forced himself to survive was because of Grace.
She doesn't kill anybody, because even though Grace knows the rules, she couldn't bring herself to kill a fellow tribute. She wondered how the others ever did it, ever killed someone or watched them die.
She gets a taste of the second option in the end.
It comes down to her and a vicious boy from four, one who had killed every other career tribute besides Grace without a second thought. Their weapons had been poised at each other, before the knife had slipped from Grace's hand, mental apologies to Rich going through her head.
"I can't kill you" she had whispered, and the boy from District 2 had smirked and raised his bow, pointing the arrow at Grace's heart.
That was when the wolf leapt from behind, ripping the boy to shreds, and splattering Grace with blood.
(Cruelly, ironically, Grace Violet Blood.)
It takes her a brief stint of Capitol therapy to get her to stop screaming at night.
Ceaser Flickerman had asked her later things about the Games, things Grace wouldn't answer, no matter what was going to happen if she didn't. She answers exactly one.
"Is there anybody back home you won for?"
Grace knew there was, knew there was someone who could make it better, make the nightmares stop, and he's home, waiting for her like she did him.
"Of course" she replied, her first smile since being home appearing "My beautiful Richard."
quarter quell.
They don't get even a year of safety. When the Quell is announced, they think it's over. Grace and Rich are planning a wedding, Mini and Franky have got it all figured out, and Nick had eventually accepted that Matty was gone. The Games were still a thing, but to them, it was nothing but a cold horrible memory.
Until the annual Quarter Quell is announced, in a way that makes Mini dig her nails into Franky's palm, causes Nick to punch a hole in the wall and Grace to break down.
On the one hundredth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the tributes shall consist of all the victors in the past twenty-five years.